Grid Tie Tilt Kits

Go back in time, maybe just 5 or more years, back to the days of solar trackers and tilted arrays. Those were the days! Now all this great technology has given way to the inevitable: Low PV prices.

If you live in Christchurch and want a Grid Tie system then 33 Degrees is the ideal angle for mounting your array.

If aesthetics are important then to keep a low profile we would have designed for a landscape mounting configuration so the array(s) would be longer and lower.

But now you might want to look at this data comparison and perhaps have your array flat mounted to the roof and spend the tilt kit money on a couple of extra panels and larger inverter.... Just a thought but the figures stack up well....

Same 10 degree angle but with 2 more panels and a larger inverter (an extra $1395 less a tilt kit $736 less Labour about half a day $260)

Station Identification

City:

Christchurch

Country/Province:

NZL

Latitude:

43.48° S

Longitude:

172.55° E

Elevation:

34 m

Weather Data:

IWEC

PV System Specifications

DC Rating:

3.60 kW

DC to AC Derate Factor:

0.850

AC Rating:

3.06 kW

Array Type:

Fixed Tilt

Array Tilt:

10.0°

Array Azimuth:

0.0°

Energy Specifications

Energy Cost:

0.2800 dollars NZL/kWh

Results

Month

Solar Radiation(kWh/m2/day)

AC
Energy(kWh)

Energy
Value(dollars NZL)

1

6.02

540

151.20

2

5.57

452

126.56

3

4.26

382

106.96

4

3.11

272

76.16

5

1.99

171

47.88

6

1.55

129

36.12

7

1.70

147

41.16

8

2.42

219

61.32

9

4.09

361

101.08

10

4.81

442

123.76

11

5.93

524

146.72

12

6.42

583

163.24

Year

3.98

4222

1182.16

The reason tilt kits are not so common is evident here, the price of PV halving in the last 4-5 years has made a big difference to the thinking of how we design systems. The only real downside to the Flat-to-roof mounted array is the winter energy is proportionally less and the summer it's more.

Caution! Do not apply this to Off-Grid system design - the angle of the panels is much more important if you want to make maximum power through the Winter!